Less than two months after five senior executives' sudden resignation, Baidu's mobile eco-business group has reorganized its resources and products to cope with a fierce war with ByteDance, a rising competitor in its home field-- search business.
In May, Xiang Hailong, who had served in Baidu for 14 years, resigned as senior vice-president and head of company's search business. His position was replaced by Dou Shen, who was overseeing Baidu's mobile business.
A Baidu sign is seen during the fourth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, China, December 4, 2017.
According to a report by Caijing, one of China's leading business news publications, the search company has been reorganized as the mobile eco-business group. Start from June, a series of adjustments were made within the company to integrate and optimize resource allocation.
On the user's product, the specific adjustment is - Ping Xiaoli is responsible for Baidu App, Baidu Baijia, search, information flow, news and mini-programs, many of which are the main channel business; Ruan Yu, previous representative of Baidu Baijia, will take charge of Baidu's Knowledge System, which is considered to be a moat product; Cao Xiaodong is responsible for large entertainment projects, including video, tieba, and game business; Zhao Shiqi continues to be responsible for the technical construction of the above business. These four executives are will report directly to the Shen Dou.
The concepts of main channel business and moat business were raised by Lu Qi, former chief operating officer of Baidu who stepped down in May 2018. In January 2017, Lu joined Baidu as Group President and Chief Operating Officer, in charge of products, technology, sales, marketing and operations. At that time, Baidu is making a difficult transition to change its core business from search to artificial intelligence. With rich tech experience and fame in Microsoft and Yahoo, Lu was highly anticipated by the market to lead the company to a new prospers future. However, Lu left the company one year later, and caused the most expensive resignation in China- in two days the market value of Baidu evaporated 13.7 billion US dollars, as investors doubt about Baidu's future.
An insider believes that Baidu Baijia and search business be managed together with mobile Baidu is to better co-ordinate resources to improve efficiency and cope with competition.
After three executives -- Wu Haifeng, Gu Guodong, and Zheng Zibin left the company, the positions of vice president of business and sales were vacancy. Now, Shen Dou took over the commercial products, and the sales are hand over to a veteran manager who recently returned.
The report also revealed that several departments of Baidu has stopped hiring. From mid-June, the interns can't transfer to formal employee. From the beginning of July, these department will be allowed to add one new employee at the ratio that two would left.
Baidu's PR department did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.
